


The Symmetry of Absence

by anno_Hreog



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 08:54:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/924379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anno_Hreog/pseuds/anno_Hreog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snape and Draco, then Draco and Harry, finally... oh, you see where this is going. </p><p> </p><p>[My first fanfic, written in 2004 I think, before <i>Half-Blood Prince</i> was published, my god, it's so far back I can't remember.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Symmetry of Absence

**Author's Note:**

> V.v.v. old fic, uploaded for archival purposes and also because I've been cleaning/ going through a v.v.v. old external harddrive since last week. 
> 
> I barely remember my old stuff. I bet there's bats innit.

 

 

 

[Wiltshire, 1985]

 

The gurgle of wine poured into crystal jolted Snape out of his drowsiness, and he stared at his glass for a moment, disoriented. Liquid gold in his hands glittered in the light, and cherry blossoms were drifting towards him from the orchard. The scent of spring in the garden of plenty.

 

He could hear the lovely Narcissa Black’s clear laughter and the happy yells of their little brat from here. After seven years, he still could not call her Malfoy in his head.

 

“1980, a curious vintage,” Lucius drawled out lazily. “One would expect the pinnacle of perfection before the fall. Instead, we have a dizzying array ranging from detestable to the sublime, chaos run amuck. Fitting, wouldn’t you say, Severus?”

 

What was the man talking about? The Sauterne? Recent history? Lucius had always been overly fond of the sound of his own voice. Once, Snape had fallen under his spell, his air of effortless mastery and sophistication. Now, he only saw a self-satisfied poseur.

 

Lucius Malfoy sat back in his chair and surveyed the scene before him through half-closed eyes. Flowers in springtime, fine wine, his beautiful wife, their obnoxiously loud child, and poor friends who could only envy his good fortune.

 

“Snape! Snape! Snape!” the tiny Malfoy cried as he flapped his arms. It was his new favorite word, and it tripped off his childish tongue like candy.

 

Narcissa insisted on dressing him in frilly white baby dresses, tied pink ribbons in his flaxen hair. Her little darling girl-boy. She had always wanted a little girl, too, but Lucius said his son was enough, and perfection cannot share its sphere with lesser contenders. Snape would have given her a daughter. As many children as she wanted. But she never loved him. No one had.

 

The little menace in lace and ribbons toddled ahead of his mother and flung his arms around Snape’s knees. He irritably tried to nudge him off, but the persistent child only clung fast to his robes and giggled.  His mother strolled after him, graceful and collected.

 

“Looks like you’ve made a friend, Severus,” she smiled and raised a delicate eyebrow. Strange how he never noticed the cruel line of her lips before. The nasty imp clambered onto his lap and rummaged through the pockets of his robes. Snape tried in vain to hold him off, but he failed before the dread onslaught of sticky, grubby fingers.

 

Draco pulled out quills and pieces of parchment, potions vials and five star anise, and threw them all on the grass. Snape could not win against this tyrant on his lap and he glared at the doting parents.

 

Lucius and Narcissa only smiled indulgently. Their little prince could do whatever he pleased.

 

Silver glinted in the sunlight and blinded him for an instant. The brat had found his mother’s cloak pin, an elaborate silver snake swallowing its own tail in a figure eight. The light shone out of the bright emerald eyes as the child held it up to the sun, fascinated.

 

“Mine!” he yelled.

 

“No!”

 

Snape was adamant. The silver cloak pin had been his mother’s, ancient protection spells woven into the precious metal and stones. He had fond hopes of gifting it to the fair Narcissa. If she could not be his queen, then he would be her knight errant, selfless and devoted.

 

Narcissa looked up from where she was whispering and laughing with Lucius. His hand closed possessively over hers, and he looked on, amused.

 

“Why not give it to the boy, Severus,” she mocked. “Who else do you have?”

 

He grit his teeth, embarrassed in his shabby black robes, his face aflame with rage at his lovely tormentor. The selfish brat grinned at him from his lap, and the sun turned his yellow hair gold and silver in the light.

 

“Have it then,” he spat out. Draco threw his sticky chubby baby’s arms around Snape’s neck and awarded him with loud wet kisses on his sallow cheek.

 

“Snape! Snape!” he cried joyfully.

 

He was both warm and cool under the careless child’s affection. Perhaps the pin found its rightful owner after all, to protect the world from this little demon.

 

“Draco, you ridiculous child,” he muttered, and his thin lips brushed against a baby soft cheek.

 

 

[Hogwarts, Year One]

 

 

“ - the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses…”

 

Little Draco Malfoy was wriggling with ill-concealed glee, almost falling off his seat, and his face was beaming in adoration of the Potions Master, Severus Snape. The lesson had barely begun, but this was already his favorite class, and his head of house, Professor Snape, was the most brilliant teacher of all.

 

“I can teach you to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death-”

 

Snape whirled around dramatically with a flourish of his black robes and spied Harry Potter scribbling on his parchment. The little show-off, just like his father, already thinks he’s better than the rest.

 

Snape has heard from the Bloody Baron, who heard it from Peeves the Poltergeist, who found out from the school portraits, that Harry Potter turned down young master Malfoy in front of the whole school. Little Draco had run to his office that night barely containing hurt and embarrassment, and Snape ended up wiping away tears and snot on his good teaching robes.

 

He glared at Potter’s messy black hair. Just like his father.

 

“Potter! What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?”

 

_In his mind’s eye, he sees that arrogant James Potter and his gang of sycophants, calling him a nasty dark wizard._

 

“Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?”

 

_James Potter and Sirius Black levitate and turn him upside down, shaming him in front of the whole school, in front of girls. Narcissa Black hides a smile behind her hand when she talks to him._

 

“What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?”

 

_He enters the tunnel below the Whomping Willow to the Shrieking Shack, and freezes at the sight of a werewolf, lunging at him. Potter drags him out. He’s rewarded for saving Snape from their own prank._

 

Potter stared back at him defiantly from under messy black hair, flaunting his lightning scar.

 

_Potter rejects Draco’s hand, and Draco cries in Snape’s bony lap late into the night, refusing to be comforted until Snape tucks him in his own bed, pulling the clean white sheets up to his neck. He sniffles wearily and buries his face into the pillow scented with lavender and anise. He’s asleep moments later. Snape lies on the black leather couch awake all night, fuming at the injustice, the insolence of Potter._

 

“And a point will be taken from Gryffindor House for your cheek, Potter,” he snarled at last. He can make that uppity little Potter’s life a living hell.

 

Draco giggled from between his two hulking friends, Crabbe and Goyle, and caught Snape’s eye. Snape assumed a stern expression, then winked at him before turning to the board.

 

 

[Hogwarts Year, Three]

 

 

The delicate clear green brew bubbled in the round glass vial over the magical fire. Draco peered curiously into it then traced the three curved loops out the top. He was cradling his arm in a sling, still bound up from that rabid hippogriff attack.

 

Snape winced as he watched Draco skirt around his intricately set up potions equipment, hoping the clumsy boy didn’t knock it over at this stage. Wolfsbane was annoying and complicated to brew, and he didn’t want to start all over again. He pretended not to notice and went on crossing out a mess of mistakes in the third year Gryffindor’s Potions essays.

 

Draco turned away from the potion, wrinkling his delicate nose, now that it began to smell foul. Good, another three minutes then. He wandered over to poke into Snape’s private stores.

 

“Is it true you have a collection of shriveled Muggle babies stuffed in bottles of Firewhiskey?” Draco called out. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Would be wicked brilliant if you did.”

 

“Might be dangerous though,” he continued rambling on. If a werewolf wanted a snack, it might break into your office and eat them all. Or even a hippogriff.”

 

 He shivered. For all his strutting about as the Malfoy heir, Draco really was a coward. Snape never approved of Lucius’s method of exposing Draco to all the horrors of the magical world, the snarling dangerous beasts and dark artifacts that stank of corruption. They’ve only made Draco more frightened, and he hid behind his two cronies, deriding the world from the safety of their cover.

 

He must award Crabbe and Goyle more house points, Snape reminded himself.

 

“Can you really raise the dead with this necro junk? Maybe I could use some of that. Kill Longbottom’s toad, and give him a zombie back.” Draco snickered at the idea. Snape refrained from rolling his eyes.

 

“That Potter would get all righteous, though. Little twerp,” he went on. That was rich coming from a boy whose growth spurt could only impress turtles.

 

“You know what he did in Transfigurations? He and that stink Weasley think they’re so clever, getting away with everything. Was great fun, though, making Scarhead fall off his broom. Worth every second.” Draco gloated, picking up an amber paperweight with a two-headed frog trapped in it.

 

“Bizarre.” He tossed it up in the air and almost dropped it from his fumbling left hand when it came down.  Snape groaned. Their prize seeker.

 

“Mr. Malfoy, must you rummage through my office - ” Snape began patiently. It wouldn’t do to show temper to a child, as if the boy had any power to move him. “ - when I’m sure you have homework to finish.” He dipped his quill into the inkwell, but jumped as he felt a soft arm wind around his neck and tease at the opening of his robes.

 

“Draco,” the boy whispered, “You used to call me Draco, remember?” He rubbed himself against Snape’s back languorously, lips brushing his ear, and Snape went momentarily rigid in shock.

 

Then he was off the next second, a wicked glint in his eye. Careless, thoughtless, Malfoy to the core.

 

“Got anything to eat?” He skipped over to open all the drawers in Snape’s supply cabinet. “I’m starving.”

 

“Third from the left,” Snape ground out, barely recovering from the sudden assault and the immediate retreat.

 

Draco threw back his head and yowled that ridiculous werewolf call he had been practicing all month. He pulled out his find, a packet of candied ginger, and waved it over his head in triumph.

 

“My favorite!” he yelled and threw himself on Snape’s black couch. He ripped open the bag, spilling half the contents on his chest, and munched away gleefully.

 

Snape would have to pick up another packet in Hogsmeade later today. A whole box of candied ginger packets, then.

 

He felt colder now, missing the ghost of a warm arm, a warm hand, and a warm boy at his back, and shook his head, furious at the sentimental nonsense. He savagely crossed out five mistakes in Potter’s essay, ambiguous statements he could have let pass.

 

“Wanna sign my cast?” Draco called from the couch.

 

Snapes snorted and refused to look up from his work.

 

By the time he finished grading, Draco had fallen asleep. Snape brushed the sugar from the side of his mouth and pulled a blanket over the dozing boy. He stopped to look at the boy’s cast, where that wild beast had torn through him. There was a tiny lightning bolt in the far corner, colored in yellow ink. The boy’s own work, most likely. Snape scratched it out with his quill and signed, “Professor Severus Snape, Potions Master” in the center with a flourish.

 

 

[Hogwarts, Year Five]

 

 

If Snape had maybe, maybe, given the slightest credence to his sober conscience speaking up, very very rarely, in a small voice, that perhaps, _perhaps_ young Harry might be confused and misunderstood, that he might not be as arrogant and swaggering as James Potter, and maybe Snape might relent and leave him be, this year had gone and proven it wrong, and he crushed out the little voice under his heel.

 

Harry Potter was the true son of James Potter, godson of that criminal Sirius Black.

 

He had yelled and stomped his way through his fifth year, defying that unctuous toady Dolores Umbridge and the Ministry of Magic, getting himself banned from Quidditch for life, had gone prying, poking, _sneaking_ into Snape’s shameful memories, careless and clumsy.

 

If only that were all.

 

Draco Malfoy had spent days after that disastrous Quidditch match and his beating at Potter’s hands in Snape’s office screaming and crying, when he had recovered enough from his bruises to scream and cry without hurting himself all over again.

 

It was not as if the boy had no warning. Snape had given him a talking to, time after time, and yet he worked himself up over Potter’s every misadventure, planned crazy schemes that always backfired in the younger Malfoy’s face and covered Potter in glory in the eyes of his peers.

 

Now nearing the end of term, spent from an uncharacteristic exertion for his OWLs, Draco lay on his side, quiet and snivelling on Snape’s black couch, as if all the spirit had been beaten out of him as well. Snape hoped this would pass. As annoying as the boy was, he was still Slytherin, still one of his own, and Slytherin House rallied under his tireless schemes and harebrained plots. And Snape hated sniveling. That was for Snivellus. He clenched his fists, again.

 

Apparently, he had worried for naught.

 

The boy sat up and sniffed, his nose all scrunched up from his petulant pout. The boy was fifteen, for the good of Merlin. And still he pouted and stomped as he did when he was five.

 

“I told you, Mr. Malfoy, not to provoke Potter. It is unseemly and undignified, and I cannot understand why you choose to ignore - ”

 

Draco only sighed heavily and rolled his eyes exaggerating the movement with a roll of his head for good measure.

 

Snape could be patient. Adolescent attitude was nothing new to him, though Draco acted as if he’d invented it.

 

“ - my advice, and continually _throw_ yourself at that Potter brat. You are putting yourself in an embarrassing position - ”

 

Snape trusted himself to keep his temper in check - after all, he was not Lucius Malfoy – as the boy snickered at what he assumed must be a crude innuendo.

 

“ – and embarrassing Slytherin House, as well as yourself.”

 

The boy was mimicking his words under his breath, and Snape sighed. He had done enough, and apparently his good advice was falling on deaf ears. As they have been for five years now.

 

“Yeah, yeah. Can I go now?” the boy mumbled sullenly, and Snape waved him off with an impatient hand.

 

Would the boy never learn? Would he never grow up?

 

*

 

Young Mr. Malfoy avoided his office for two weeks after that, and Snape told himself that he was relieved to finally get that bothersome boy out of his hair, but his office felt empty. No nosy, clumsy boy poking about his shelves and asking impudent questions, or raging on about Potter, feeding their mutual ire and secret enjoyment.

 

The boy took Potter’s latest triumph badly. His father was arrested and publicly shamed, and Potter was vindicated, if the papers’ recognition of the Dark Lord’s return could be called a vindication, or any sort of triumph at all.

 

Now, the wizarding world must look to serious matters, and children must grow up ahead of their time. If Draco had ever thought of Potter as his rival, Potter now left him behind in the realm of childish taunts and schoolboy rivalry to claim his position in the world as a hero, as a living myth. And Draco Malfoy never reacted well to being ignored.

 

So, he had taken to sulking.

 

The night before the end of term, the boy slipped into his office again. He kept staring at his shoes, slinking about the shadows, pulling out books and dropping them on the floor.

 

Snape ignored him as usual and went about his grading. Perhaps he wanted to find out his Potions grades. But he was glad he had stashed a packet of candied ginger in his stores cabinets.

 

The candles flickered, casting odd shadows in the corners. Draco solemnly traced the stone gargoyle on the shelf, poking a finger in and out of its sunken eyes. He frowned in imitation of the creature’s grotesque face.

 

“It’s past your bedtime,” Snape said without looking up from the stack of parchment. The boy was silent. Odd. He marked up yet another idiotic response, from a Ravenclaw prefect no less, and rifled through the exam essays. Still nothing.

 

“Perhaps a snack?” Snape tried again. This had always worked with the child. “Candied ginger, perhaps? I can brew us some chamomile tea.”

 

The boy sniffed. “Maybe a nightcap,” he slyly looked at Snape from under long lashes. In this light he looked like a young Narcissa, then in a flicker of the candle shifted to a young Lucius. But softer, slighter.

 

“I think not,” Snape snorted, and the boy turned back to pull out books in silence.

 

“He’s never going to notice me, is he?” Draco finally whispered at the bookcase. “I’m never going to be good enough for him.” He trailed his fingers over the spines of ancient spellbooks, and stepped carefully around the tomes he had dropped on the floor.

 

 

“Who do you mean?” Snape put away the exam papers and folded his hands on his desk.

 

“I don’t know,” Draco muttered, half to himself. “Father, Potter, whoever. They’re all too important.” He wandered listlessly over to Snape’s desk. “I’m nothing. I finally figured it out.”

 

He perched himself on the edge of the desk and swung his legs idly, bumping the sides. He stared into his lap.

 

“You are _not_ nothing!” Snape fumed.

 

Draco looked at him and smiled, wistful and fey, his eyes gone soft and condescending. Snape felt the boy was drunk on a bout of maudlin self-pity, but couldn’t help being caught up in it, despite himself. It was the Malfoy charm at work. Strange magics in their blood, in their silver gold hair.

 

“Snape, Snape, Snape,” the boy chanted softly, imitating his own childish voice. “ _Severusss_ ,” he drew out the name in a whisper, and he slipped off the desk and onto Snape’s lap in one graceful move.

 

Snape should stand up and drop the boy on the floor, order him to go straight to bed.

 

“You care about me, don’t you, _Severus_?” the boy whispered into his neck, and plucked at the clasps of his robe. “You’re the only one, the only one, Severus. Severusss. _Severusss_.”

 

The boy, at fifteen, seemed to have found a new favorite word and it wasn’t Potter. The name rolled off his silver tongue in a hypnotic love song of snakes, drawing out sibilants in a low hiss, and his voice made Snape shiver.

 

Lips and teeth nipped and kissed up his neck, under his jaw, but when a slender cold hand reached inside his robes and touched bare skin, Snape came to his senses.

 

“Mr. Malfoy!” He stood up abruptly, but the boy landed on his feet like a cat. “Go to bed!”

 

“Yours?” His smirk turned coy in his inept seduction, as he looked up from his ridiculously long lashes. The spell was broken.

 

“Enough of this nonsense.” Snape pulled his robes together. “Back to your dormitory. Now!”

 

He all but threw the boy out of his office, slamming the door after him. When he was safe, when he was alone again, he leaned against the heavy door and sank to his heels.

 

The boy avoided his eyes during the leaving feast, and Snape was grateful for small favors.

 

But all summer, his dreams were peppered with visions of smooth slender limbs tangled in his, and silver gold hair that gleamed in the candlelight. Soft pink lips whispering his name like a caress. He felt giddy and drunk. He felt like a young man again.

 

He could not wait for the Fall.

 

 

[Hogwarts Year, Six]

 

 

One fleeting taste fed an obsession, like a drop of water on a growth of Devil’s Snare, and the single memory of a mysterious night dark with promise spawned countless impossible futures, even as his sardonic inner voice tried to stomp them out.

 

“It’s good to see some spring in your step, Severus,” Flitwick squeaked. “In these dark times.”

 

In these dark times, he would do anything to see the light. He was aged before his time, dry and bitter, not some callow infatuated youth.

 

The boy was a nuisance, crude and clumsy, no seductive siren, no carnal dream, if Snape ever had any. He was the same as his other annoying students, in the same league as Potter and his ilk. That insolent brat had gone overly serious in his hero’s role overnight, as this one had gone silent and moping. Dark times indeed.

 

The moping brat was lying on the black couch again, one leg slung over the armrest. He didn’t chatter absently as he used to, and Snape missed his noisy nonsense. He had toed off his shoes and socks, and Snape deliberately did not look at the graceful arch of foot and delicately turned ankle. The thoughtless boy had apparently forgotten all about last term’s indiscretion - didn’t mean a thing to him. He was humming under his breath to a song in his head, smiling to himself as if he was keeping the world’s most delicious secret.

 

“Don’t you have work, Mr. Malfoy?” Snape intoned sternly, willing his voice not to catch. “Prefect duties?”

 

“Mm-mm,” the boy answered.

 

He was doodling idly on a parchment. His hair shone silver and gold in the candlelight. It never darkened into mousy brown as blond hair was wont to, but remained the same bright baby hair. All his years as a Death Eater must be catching up with him if he found that sort of thing appealing. Children, indeed.

 

“Well,” he stood up. “I, for one, am busy, and cannot afford the distraction. So off you go.” Draco of last year would have rolled his eyes and dumped the contents of his cabinet drawers inside out.

 

This year’s boy slid off the couch and stepped out the door without a word.

 

Snape went over to pick up the parchment he had left behind. Beasts. The boy had been doodling cartoon beasts. Lions and snakes. Head of a lion, body of a snake, curling around to eat its own tail.

 

The boy was going mad, addled for certain, what with his father in prison, and no more silly pranks to fill the time. He hadn’t ranted about Potter once since term started, had carefully avoided him instead. Now that he was following Snape’s good advice, it didn’t seem right.

 

Snape would have to cheer him up, the ridiculous child. Even when he was quiet he demanded attention.

 

*

 

The tiny black kitten peered over the edge of Snape’s bony hands and blinked its large green eyes at the boy and the boy stared back. Snape had picked the clumsiest one of the litter, the one brimming with mad energy like the boy’s, the one that kept chasing and biting its own tail.

 

Draco poked at the kitten and it batted back, claws extended, not giving an inch. Snape saw a ghost of the child’s old smirk as he took the beast from Snape, soft slender fingers brushing against his callused ones, and his heart caught in his throat again.

 

“You should name it,” he muttered gruffly. 

 

The boy paid him no heed, entranced by the little claws reaching for his nose, and hugged it close, breathing in the smell of clean fur with a happy sigh.

 

“Potter,” he heard him whisper into the kitten’s back, and Snape stiffened.

 

The boy skipped out of the room without looking back, caught up in his newest friend.

 

*

 

His present had backfired.

 

It turned Draco back into a semblance of the boy he had been, when Snape could see him as anything but.

 

He barged into Snape’s office kitten in tow and barely gave him a second glance before flinging himself on the black couch, and crooned to his kitten all evening. He had gone back to rambling nonsense, only now he talked incessantly to his kitten, always about Potter, but the tenor was off.

 

“Potter, do you like this chicken best or would you rather have the salmon? Maybe you deserve both, Potter. You’re like me, Potter, just like me. We deserve the best. Potter ate chicken at dinner today, maybe you should just have the chicken, too.”

 

“Do you think I should do my Potions homework first, Potter, or Transfigurations? I think ol’ Snape will let us off easy if we slack a bit.” He didn’t look at Snape at all. Ol’ Snape?

 

“What, Potter? You think Snape is a nasty old bat? Think he has treats for us, Potter? You think Potter likes candied ginger, Potter? He eats Chocolate Frogs, I know. Maybe I don’t like candied ginger anymore. I’m having a frog instead. Not for you, bad Potter. Cats can’t eat chocolate.”

 

“What do you think Potter _really_ meant in Charms class, Potter? Do you think he meant me? Do you think he thinks about me?”

 

“Potter, you think Slytherin will win, again, don’t you? Hufflepuff’s no match for us. I’ll have to get you a nice Slytherin shirt for the game. Green, yeah, match your eyes too. You can sit with ol’ Snape, cheer for me. Yowl when I catch the snitch. That’ll impress Potter, you think, me catching the snitch? He’ll be watching me, too. Won’t be just me, then.”

 

“I love you Potter, I love you love you love you best. Do you love me best?”

 

Snape thought the term would never end.

 

 

[Hogwarts, Year Seven I]

 

 

The nasty beast had zapped all of the boy’s energy. The boy was listless now, not even sullen, his spirit beaten down, while the cat ran in frenzied circles around Snape’s office. Snape hid all his valuable and fragile supplies as a caution. If he banned the crazy animal, the boy would never come back.

 

He is alone. His father long escaped from Azkaban, his mother gone missing. Half his friends and cronies have left. All the floo networks at Hogwarts have been sealed off since the beginning of the year, except in the Headmaster’s office. Theodore Nott found and reported a timed portkey, probably sent by Draco’s parents. Snape wasn’t completely sure the boy would have used it, but he made sure that he wouldn’t. He locked the boy alone in his office for three days to stop Draco from running off to join them. Draco had screamed and yelled and pounded on the door, until he ended up sobbing on the floor, asking for Potter. His cat.

 

Now that Draco was fading away, too tired to demand attention, Potter sat up to take notice and look back. It was ironic really.

 

And how could the Boy-Who-Lived not pay attention, not look? Just like his father, he lived to take things away from Snape at the very moment he wanted them, the very moment they became precious and desirable to him.

 

Draco made a strange sight wandering the dark empty corridors of Hogwarts, talking to his cat. He sat alone at a half-empty Slytherin table like an exiled prince from an exotic land. The lower years hissed behind his back, called him Filch, a Death-Eater spy.

 

To Snape, he was the farthest thing from Filch, this pale elegant boy, a contrast of white and gold against the black leather, looking longingly into the fireplace as if it was his only escape from Hogwarts. His cat was walking all over him and he let it. The light from the fire cast an eerie light, and Draco’s hair shone like burnished copper.

 

Snape sat next to him, put the boy’s legs up on his lap. The cat hissed and spat at him, fur standing on its back, and Snape scowled back. The boy glanced through his half-closed eyes, said nothing. The hollows under his eyes were purple and smudged. He was beautiful now, an exquisite corpse.

 

In irritation, Snape pulled the nasty animal’s tail, and the cat jumped up batting its sharp claws.

 

“Ow,” the boy’s eyes flew open and his hand pressed against his face.

 

The wretched thing had gone and scratched his cheek, and red blossomed on white like sudden life. Red ran down long white fingers into the silver gold hair. Snape’s alarm lasted for an instant before the vision of color overwhelmed him.

 

Severus Snape was not accustomed to the beauty that was extravagance, the beauty of having, of taking what you wanted. That only led to excess and the moral descent of Death Eaters. In the rigorous ascetic life he had built for himself, beauty was shallow, mere surface.

 

But in the desperation of the coming war, in his empty longing, in the strange quiet of the night, the vivid feast of color before him bade him to desire and take.

 

Snape brought the pale hand up to his mouth, and slowly licked the blood off his fingers, sucking at the fingertips. The boy’s eyes were wide, fixed on Snape’s face, his face frozen, but he did not protest. Snape leaned down until he was lying next to the boy’s slender body and gathered him in his arms. The pale angular face was tense. Snape licked his cheek, lapping at the wound until the red flow stilled.

 

Draco made no sound as Snape carefully, reverently, pealed off his clothing until he lay bare and warm against Snape’s black robes, and the boy’s young heart was pounding so loud against his chest, Snape was sure Dumbledore could hear it, even Lucius, wherever he was.

 

Every kiss, every touch, he had to take, nothing was given back. But Snape was used to not being given things. Taking was different. It gave him a heady rush as he carried the boy to his narrow bed, and lay him down on the crisp white sheets. And when he took the boy, who stifled cries into his wrist, he took from the world, from his barren past, from Lucius who had always had so much and never cared for his things.

 

Wide grey eyes never left his sallow face as he filled the boy lying pliant under him, and Snape thought he could fill him to the brim with life and joy.

 

*

 

“How long do you think this will last?” Draco asked. Snape shrugged and ran a wet sponge down the boy’s back. The water was still warm. Heating charms were a luxury that hurt no one in this siege.

 

“Do you think I could get some Chocolate Frogs?” he flicked soap bubbles at the cat sitting on a footstool next to the tub. The demon animal turned its back on them in disapproval and licked its paw.

 

“I’ll try,” Snape cupped water in his hands and poured it over Draco’s slight shoulders. He had never hit a sudden growth spurt, but Snape thought he grew into his form gracefully. No awkward gangly adolescence for young master Malfoy. “Do you want candied ginger as well?”

 

“No,” he answered, absently poking at his cat, but the animal ignored him.

 

Snape drew the boy back into his lap and folded his arms around him. The boy never resisted, if he never initiated anything, and after a couple of weeks he ended up living in Snape’s rooms. The siege had set up strange new rules, unspoken words between determined survivors. More than half the students were gone, a number of them to Death Eater parents, probably dead, if not now, then later. Their ranks were never easy on the young. He’d saved his boy from that.

 

He held the boy close and felt his desire wake against him.

 

“We’ll get dirty again,” Draco squirmed, but it only urged his need, and the boy relented, taking him in, the warm water soothing, slapping against them. Sometimes in the heat of the moment, when he felt Draco move with him, biting his lips to stifle gasps and moans, he could believe the boy craved this as much as he did.

 

He dried off to rush to a meeting in the Headmaster’s office. Potter would be there, but Draco was not part of the inner circle. Snape’s word would not have deflected suspicion from the younger Malfoy. In any case, he wanted to keep Draco safe from the line of fire.

 

He looked back before closing the door.

 

The boy was leaning back, his face illuminated by the dozen candles around the ancient wrought-iron tub, but his light came from the inside.

 

He continued to tease his cat with a sudsy hand, a curious smile around his lips,

 

 

[Hogwarts, Year Seven II]

 

 

The siege was not a holdout of desperation, not to Harry Potter. Hogwarts was powerful, the very stones protected by ancient charms and spells. Rather, Harry thought of it as a central fortress protecting the innocents within, a directing force of the Light, and a symbol of hope for the witches and wizards outside. The end was near, he could feel it. And they would be victorious.

 

Harry was in his element now, in the thick of things. Life revolved not around grades or homework or house points, but saving the world, to put it grandly, a role he had prepared for since he had first discovered magic.

 

He ran down the corridors through the dungeons. He needed to see Snape. Everything was happening at once.

 

The dungeons were mostly empty, so he didn’t expect to run into anyone, especially not Draco Malfoy.

 

“Ow-” the other boy fell and glared up at him from the stone floor. A black cat sprang out of his arms and leaped onto a suit of armor.

 

“Hey, sorry.” Harry held out his hand to help him up, but Malfoy ignored it and brushed himself off. “I knew I saw you around, Malfoy.”

 

“Yeah.” He turned to grab his cat who refused to come down from atop the knight’s helm. Harry saw that his hair was damp and his cheeks were flushed. He smelled faintly of something Harry couldn’t place. Anise and sweat and something musky.

 

“So, you want to help out, or something? There’s a war going on you know,” Harry asked.

 

He didn’t want to let Malfoy go yet. He might vanish into the walls like a ghost, like the pale imitation of his old self he had become. He was too thin, too drawn, but Harry couldn’t look away. Morbid fascination, he supposed.

 

“Thought you didn’t want me around.” Malfoy gave up on his cat and stared sullenly down at his shoes.

 

“Why’d you think that? We need all the help we can get.” Harry reached up for the cat, and it jumped into his arms. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

 

Harry smiled, petting the black cat. It was purring loudly in his arms. Malfoy was looking at him with hungry eyes. He needed a good meal, the sorry shrimp. “Want a Chocolate Frog?”

 

He pulled a packet out of his pockets and tossed it at Malfoy.

 

“Thanks.” Malfoy smiled for the first time and he ate the frog in two bites, chocolate smudged around the corner of his lips. Harry wiped it with his forefinger, and Malfoy leaned in towards him.

 

“Mr. Potter!”

 

Snape was glaring at him from the door to his office. The door Malfoy had come out of. Harry stared from Malfoy to Snape and back. Malfoy wouldn’t look at him again, but neither would he look at Snape.

 

“Professor Dumbledore called an emergency meeting, Snape… _Professor_ Snape. We’re going through with Hermione’s plan,” Harry gritted out. “In two hours. You might want to prepare your schematics.”

 

He knew something was off. His eyes narrowed, and Snape sneered down his nose at him. The cat only dug deeper into his arms. Malfoy looked at it desperately.

 

“Can I… .” He reached for his cat, his hand brushing Harry’s arm. Harry’s eyes flew open in realization, and he glared at Snape. He grabbed Malfoy’s hand.

 

“I’ll see you then.” Harry turned his back on Snape. “Come on, let’s get you something to eat.”

 

Draco didn’t look back once as he skipped to keep up with Harry, didn’t let go of his hand, didn’t see Snape slump against the cold stone wall.

 

*

 

To call it a whirlwind courtship would suggest a decent passage of time.

 

The moment Harry Potter and his heroic heart reached out and ‘rescued’ Draco Malfoy from that greasy git, fate was sealed. As for Draco, after years of obsessing, fussing, longing for him, Potter was finally his. Or, the other way around. Draco didn’t step foot in Snape’s office again.

 

And Snape watched with a pang as the giddy young fools fell in love, with the shameless, delirious happiness that was the province of the very young.

 

Under the shadow of war, they went through all the foolish motions of young lovers, held hands, kissed, giggled, shared food, cuddled, stayed up late talking, laughing, arguing, and making up, as if they had discovered each step themselves, and made everyone around them rather uncomfortable.

 

If Draco was mindless with joy and showered Potter with too much clingy affection - too much for one person to possibly bear, Hermione Granger nodded sagely - then Potter was not one to notice, but others did.

 

If Potter took all of Malfoy’s adoration in stride, serving as it did as balm for his lonely and neglected childhood, Snape complained bitterly only to himself when he returned to his empty rooms at night. That of course James Potter’s son would take such a precious gift for granted.

 

Even young love didn’t stop the whispers of suspicion directed at young Malfoy, who now sat in on all meetings of the War Council. Harry, for his part stood up for him when he noticed, which was a good half of the time. But for the other half, Draco was alone, and the caustic glances scorched him. Snape would have defended him, but he couldn’t look Snape in the face, not when he’d left so abruptly, not even returning to collect his things.

 

*

 

Harry watched as Malfoy splashed in and out of the foamy green bubbles of the vast pool in the Prefect’s bathroom, giddy as a child. The cat with no name (as he called it) was carefully washing its paw next to Harry, who put down his advanced _Defense_ textbook. He’d been going over the basics all evening, but now he’d rather watch his boyfriend, who looked like a seal with his pale hair plastered wet to his skull.

 

“You almost done?” he called out, as Malfoy dove back into the warm water.

 

He rose again, green foam in his blond hair, and Harry thought, no, maybe he looked like a mermaid from a fairy tale.

 

“Maybe,” he grinned at Harry.

 

“Sure I can’t come in with you?” Harry thought it might be fun, playing in the water. Plus, it would be hot.

 

Malfoy paled. “No! I’m almost done. Just wait a few minutes.” He face went blank, as it did when Malfoy tried to cover up panic during planning meetings. Harry might be called dense sometimes, but he noticed <I>that.</I> And that it was usually when Snape sat across from him.

 

Harry carefully covered his book with a towel. The cat stared down at it and played with the folds.

 

“Did he… what did he - ” he asked quietly.

 

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Malfoy started scrubbing at his arms and chest until he turned red. Harry leaned over the pool to stop him.

 

“Hey, don’t do that. You’re close to scraping off your skin.”

 

Malfoy didn’t look at him.

 

“What’s wrong? Did he… did he do something awful… did he hurt you?” He didn’t really want to know.

 

Malfoy silently dried himself off. He wrapped the oversized towel around himself like a blanket and stared down at his wrinkled pink toes. After a long minute, he padded over to his cat and tried to scratch it behind the ears, but the cat leapt off the seat and ran to the door, tail raised and flicking side to side.

 

Malfoy sighed.

 

“I’ll never be good enough for you, will I?” he whispered. “Either of – ”

 

He ran out of the bathroom, leaving Harry not a little confused.

 

Later, Malfoy only laughed about it, said he’d had a long day.

 

He took to wearing a silver cloak clasp at his throat, a silver snake curled into a figure eight. He joked that the green eyes reminded him of Harry, that he it made him feel safe.

 

 

[St. Mungo’s Hospital, 1997]

 

 

In the end, it was nobody’s fault and everybody’s fault.

 

That Draco wanted more than anything to be a hero, too.

 

That Harry encouraged him, made him believe he could do things.

 

That the Order never trusted that evil little Malfoy spawn not to betray them, or at least fuck it up royally.

 

That Seamus Finnegan didn’t watch Draco’s back as he would have a Gryffindor’s.

 

That Snape had so conditioned himself not to look Draco’s way, he was a split second too late.

 

That Draco fucked up as they all expected him to.

 

That he froze the crucial moment, when he saw his father.

 

That it had to be Lucius Malfoy at the other end of the wand, driving curse after dark curse into his wayward son.

 

In the end, away from celebrations and festivities, Harry found himself sitting next to a neat white hospital bed in St. Mungo’s Hospital, looking at a pale face that remained frozen in the moment. He looked so peaceful lying there, Harry could almost see him wake up, rub the sleep from his eyes, and throw his arms around Harry as he had done every day for the joyous eighty-seven days they had together.

 

He traced the closed eyelids softly with his fingertips, down too-sharp cheekbones, a soft cheek that lost none of its baby fat, across thin parched lips. Quiet and still, and beautiful in Harry’s eyes. Like a princess in a fairy-tale.

 

Maybe if he… .

 

He leaned in to kiss him, and held his breath.

 

Nothing, then.

 

He sighed and slumped back in his uncomfortable chair. A silver cloak clasp lay on the bedside table, where the nurse had put it.

 

He turned it over in his hand, the green jeweled eyes sparkling at him. Draco had worn it that fateful day.

 

A shadow fell over him and he looked up at a weary face, hooded black eyes.

 

“What are _you_ doing here?” he snarled at Snape.

 

Snape ignored him and pulled up a chair, gazing solemnly at the figure on the bed.

 

“Get out!” Harry growled under his breath. It didn’t seem right to shout in front of Draco. “He doesn’t want you here. We don’t want you here.”

 

Snape sneered down at him over his hooked nose, eyes narrowed into slits. “And you know what he wants?”

 

“Not you. You abused him, hurt him, you filthy pervert. You have no right to be here.” The clasp dug sharp into his clenched fists.

 

“He said that?”

 

“No, but… I… I _know_.”

 

“Three months make you an expert, Potter?” he hissed. “Where were you when he was hit? Before that? Where were you for seven years? For seventeen? Watching over and caring?”

 

Harry fumed and stared down at the clasp in his hands. It wouldn’t do for one decorated war hero to beat up another. Even when the greasy git deserved it.

 

“Wore that, did he? Did he say it was from me?” Snape continued, “Did he tell you everything, Potter? How we – ”

 

“Shut up.” Harry said wearily. What good did bickering do now? And he never wanted to know.

 

They sat in silence, staring at the third.

 

Harry didn’t want to be the first to leave, but he couldn’t sit here with Snape much longer.

 

“Nothing to do now,” he said finally. He held out the clasp. “You want this back?”

 

Snape snorted. “You give up too easily, Potter.” He took the clasp and put it back on the table. “This saved him, you know. Ancient protection charms, woven in with love.” He smirked.

 

“What - ?!” Harry was on his feet. “Then he’s not dead? Then he’s - ?”

 

“Sleeping, yes.” Snape couldn’t look any more smug, the git.

 

“Then why didn’t you tell me?! Why did you make me think - ?!” He couldn’t believe this, but it wasn’t fury that was taking over.

 

“And ruin the surprise?” he chuckled mirthlessly. “It was rather enjoyable, watching you suffer, Potter.”

 

“You bastard,” Harry said without heat. He could feel his mouth tug up into a smile, until it split his face. “When will he wake up, then?”

 

Snape sobered. “No one knows. In a few months, years. When he decides to. Perhaps he never will.” He raised his eyebrows at Harry. “I, of course, am prepared for a patient vigil, unlike you.”

 

Harry could take a challenge.

 

 

[London, After the War]

 

 

The cat with no name, as Harry called it, was what settled the matter. Someone had to take care of the cat. And neither would give an inch and let the other take it, much as Snape detested the loathsome animal.

 

Harry cleaned out 12 Grimmauld Place and set a basket and a litter box for the cat in the kitchen. A month later Severus Snape moved in, taking over the entire third floor. He converted one of the spare rooms into a private Potions laboratory, for his private amusement, he said. It was more convenient to live in London to go in to see Draco every day, and he couldn’t let that wretched Potter boy win. He’d hang on to what was his.

 

Snape missed Hogwarts sometimes, missed talking to Albus every day, missed his cozy rooms, the soothing ambience of his office, and the black leather couch where a silly boy had sprawled out and chattered at him since his first day at school. But he didn’t miss the children, the swarm of stupidity and incompetence that made him groan day in and day out. Look at where that had landed him. Living in the same house as Harry Potter, waiting for another brat to wake up. He was taking his royal time about it, too, the spoiled child.

 

There was no end of opportunities for a decorated war hero, and Snape soon discovered that stupidity and incompetence was not limited to school children. But he could live with that. He even learned to laugh without bitterness, as he complained to Potter in the messy kitchen of 12 Grimmauld Place. And Draco was more than capable of shutting up and listening to him now.

 

They decided to call the cat with no name, Cat, until Draco woke up to give it a proper new name. Snape was loath to tell Potter what the cat’s real name was, wouldn’t give Potter the satisfaction. Potter, he knew, secretly called the cat, Draco, and Snape decided the universe had a lousy sense of humor.

 

He ended up hissing “Scat!” at it, most of the time, for various reasons.

 

One night three years later, over cheap red wine from a jug in the kitchen, they sat in mute despair long into the night. And after yet another day of watching over a boy who would not wake, they found comfort in each other.

 

There was no snarling, no insults, no sharp attempts to hurt. And hopelessness melted away into hazy pleasure, as two men, one young, one old, found another balm for their loneliness, for lives full of disappointment and neglect.

 

 

[Seventeen Years in Five]

 

 

To the world, Draco Malfoy slept peacefully.

 

He slept on without a care, the same seventeen year-old boy for five long years. Five years as Harry and Snape made peace, built their lives together with grudging affection, and the waiting turned into a part of a routine, the sorrow fading until it hurt less and less.

 

In his mind, Draco Malfoy walked on and on, tireless, along a long and winding road littered with failure.

 

He walked through his childhood home, the vast gardens empty and dead now, the house burned down to the ground. No house elves, no mother, no parties. Father turned his back on him.

 

Alone, he played every game he lost to Harry Potter. Replayed every snitch he failed to catch. Every detention he served. Every house point he lost.

 

Over and over, a hippogriff reared on its hind legs over him and tore through his arm. Granger hit him, slap after slap.

 

Potter bested him in duel after duel.

 

Potter and his friends hexed him every year home on the train.

 

Ferrets snapped and nipped at him, and he hit hard stone walls.

 

He saw his father’s disappointment, his mother’s shame. Snape’s anger.

 

Snape.

 

He held Draco awkwardly in thin arms, smelling of anise and potions as Draco cried in his lap. Draco tasted ginger and sugar, felt the smooth black leather on his skin as Snape kissed him, as he entered him, caressed him, loved him.

 

He felt warm water, warm hands on his back, as he leaned back into comfort and safety.

 

His cat wound itself around his legs, yowling loudly for a treat.

 

And Potter.

 

Wonderful Harry, full of the sun, full of joy, as they laughed and danced and held each other tight.

 

Harry would hate him if he found out how soiled he was, if he ever found out Draco loved Snape, too. He had to love Harry best, give him more so he would stay, wouldn’t be disappointed, wouldn’t leave him as he had left Snape.

 

He scratched and rubbed at his skin raw, until it was red, until it would come off, until he scrubbed off his impurity, his failures, until he was nothing.

 

And he walked on.

 

Until he wasn’t walking away from his failures anymore, until he was walking toward the light, until all he could see was Harry.

 

And Snape.

 

His cat meowed impatiently and started swishing its tail.

 

Time to go home, then.

 

Time to wake up.

 

And he did.

 

 

[St. Mungo’s Hospital, 2002]

 

 

No one was there when he opened his eyes. The long-term patients’ ward was dark in the wee hours of the night, and the muttering from a crazy patient one bed over frightened him.

 

He didn’t want to go back to sleep, not for a long time, anyway. So he sat up in bed and mulled over his options.

 

And kept turning them over in his head into the next day, wandering through the corridors of the busy hospital. He overheard snippets of conversation, here and there.

 

He had woken up into a new world. Every witch and wizard seemed up on Muggle things. A new minister of Magic was in office, Arthur Weasley. There was no war, no fear looming over their heads, only a hopeful future.

 

And Harry was a hero at last, just like Draco always thought he would be. And Snape, too, it seemed. He sighed wearily as he looked again at an old copy of the Daily Prophet. Harry and Snape were sitting together at a ministry banquet. Harry leaned in to say something to Snape, and Snape nodded slightly and whispered back, smirking. A private moment caught on film.

 

He didn’t have a lot to pack. Sleeping for five years left him with few mementos. He made his own bed neatly, and found his old silver cloak clasp in the drawer by the bed.

 

He was fastening it on when he heard someone behind him.

 

Harry.

 

“I heard you woke up. Sorry I wasn’t there.” He was out of breath.

 

“S’all right. Was in the middle of the night, anyway.” Draco brushed the corner of the narrow white bed, smoothing out a wrinkle in the sheets.

 

“Your cat’s fine. We took care of – ” Harry started, but Draco interrupted him.

 

“Thanks. I want him back,” he said curtly.

 

Harry pursed his lips, a wry expression on his face. He’d grown up, while Draco was still a child, a useless boy. He wouldn’t cry, not in front of him.

 

“Now, if you don’t mind - ”

 

“Don’t be stupid,” Harry said and grabbed his hand.

 

He’d always let Harry take control, do what he wanted, and that habit took over as Harry signed him out of the hospital, and Draco followed him mutely through a maze of exits, in and out of floo points, down an unfamiliar street. Until Harry dragged him up the steps to an old townhouse in the middle of London and opened the front door.

 

“We’re back!” Harry called out, and his cat dashed down the hall. He picked it up, reveling in the soft black fur, in the unceasing purr greeting him.

 

In the kitchen, Snape was sitting at an old table, drinking cheap red wine from a coffee mug. He looked at Draco and tried to frown sternly, but it turned into a smile that threatened to crack the dour set of his face.

 

“It’s about time, you ridiculous boy,” he muttered.

 

His cat leapt out of his arms onto the kitchen table. Snape knocked over his mug as he stood up to take Draco in his arms, and the cat walked into the spilt wine, leaving red paw-prints over the table top.

 

Draco breathed in the comforting smell of anise and ginger on Snape’s black robes, as Harry held them tight.

 

The cat sat calmly washing its paws in its superior cat way, as if it had always known things would end this way.

 

They ended up calling it Cat, after all, because some things were better left unnamed.

 

 

 

 


End file.
